Stark Lushness Illuminated. Liz Pappademas's solo debut,11 Songs, is gorgeous and lush in a sparse sort of way. The uncluttered arrangements and production allow her songwriting, vocals, and piano playing to shine through. “It's a subtle, nonfiction record,” Pappademas says, “intimate and personal in its execution and content. The instrumentation informs the style — piano, stark vocals, drums, bass, pedal steel, and a few vintage keyboards.” - Read the rest of the March 2008 issue of Electronic Musician, Pro/File interview here:
These days, with so many solipsistic, narcissistic singer-songwriters who are seemingly unable to sing about anything but themselves, it’s refreshing to encounter a performer like Liz Pappademas. The pianist — formerly of the Austin band Hurts to Purr and later based in San Francisco — recently relocated to Los Angeles and just released a collection of artful, intelligent original ballads, Eleven Songs. She plays with colors on “Desaturate It,” invoking Robert Rauschenberg and Jackson Pollock, and paints a palpably poetic portrait of injustice on “The Born Again April Fool.” She’s bewitchingly enigmatic on “Open,” couched as a Houdini escape fantasy: “Czechoslovakia’s cold this time of year/My mouth is scarred and full of gears.” Pappademas recalls life-changing earthquakes (“Loma Prieta”), wades into dreamtime surrealism (“Hall Filled Up Like a Lake”), decries the desolation of war (“Soldier’s Girls”), surrenders to wanderlust (“Keep Going West”), and lightens up for a spell on the beguiling “Vacation Romance,” where she decides that “you’ll look like Sean Connery/and I’ll get to be all the Bond girls.” She’s a little bit of everything, and each song unfolds like a fully realized movie. (Falling James)
- Music Pick L.A. Weekly, December 7-13, 2007
Pappademas, the former lead of the now-defunct band Hurts to Purr, strips both music and truth down to their scaffolds. Relocating to Los Angeles, she has released the album Eleven Songs, a spare, clever, and occasionally haunting collection of her piano-driven tunes. Pappademas is a genuine craftswoman: she pays close attention to the construction of a song yet manages to never lose sight of its emotional foundation.
- Paradigm Art/Literary Journal, January 28, 2008
Liz Pappademas' new recording 11 Songs is easily one of the best and most beautiful albums of the year and her recent move to Los Angeles has made us happy to no end.
- L.A.-Underground, October 18, 2007
Your 1 Thing for Today (Weekend Edition!): Friday, Sept 14th - Sunday, Sept 16
Posted in 1 thing, Time In, TONY blog by Alison Rosen on September 14th, 2007
Not to brag or anything, but I just got off the phone with my new buddyroo, Josh Schwartz, and we were talking about music, and I decided to pay him the compliment of talking at length about myself and all my various feelings about things pertaining to me, and afterward I was reflecting while checking myself out in a mirror and thinking that, as I was explaining to ol' J.S., music used to be such a big part of my life - I mean, I used to play in a band for crissakes and it just isn't anymore. (Although I do really like the new Rilo Kiley album but I forgot to tell him that.) And part of loving music was loving going to shows. I can't even remember the last show I went to. It was probably the first Woodstock! (I can't remember it which means I was there.) Anyway, this is a long way of saying that you and I should go see Liz Pappademas this weekend because her music is dark and pretty (but not twee or tinkly, lest you get the wrong idea), and I bet her show wouldn't be annoying, if by annoying you mean packed with things that make you think, Yep, this is why I stopped going to shows. She's playing for free at 8pm tomorrow night at Pianos Upstairs Lounge. I'll be the one with fantastic hair talking to and about myself.
- Time Out New York, September 14, 2007
Open Mic, May 21, 2007
Liz Pappademas says she was 'born in the back seat of a Checker cab in front of Lincoln Center in New York,' but grew up in San Francisco, where she wrote and recorded her latest CD, 11 Songs. It's a beautifully downbeat collection of piano-driven art-pop tunes reflecting on broken hearts, bitterness and murder.
Pappademas sings with a slightly raspy voice that's earned comparisons to Fiona Apple, and the production on her latest album is reminiscent of Apple's work. But Pappdemas' music is less theatrical and more introspective. There's little percussion on 11 Songs and the overall mood is one of pure melancholy.
Additional recordings for 11 Songs were made 'in basements, closets, and other small dark spaces in San Francisco and Austin,' says Pappademas. The album features Austin musicians Gary Newcomb on pedal steel, Jeff Johnston on bass and Rob Sanchez on drums.
Pappademas says she and producer Brian Kehew "had a great time... ...coming up with names for the record, among them: Downer, Take Prozac Before Listening, Lashes Long, Dork Hill, Saturate!, Tours, Not Wars, Enjoying the Lope, DelRubio!, A Rhodes By Any Other Name, Middle of the Rhodes, Dwarves, Ape Men and White Robed Giants (thank you, Ralph), and Scare the F*** Out of You. But "after long deliberation I decided on "11 Songs".
This is the second time Pappademas has appeared on Open Mic. She was first featured with her previous and short-lived band, Hurts to Purr in early 2006.
Liz Pappademas
March 28, Hotel Utah Saloon
LOCAL LIVE "Thanks, you guys, for coming to my birthday party!" the beaming Bay Area singer-songwriter Liz Pappademas says as she sits down at the piano and sets out to kick off her West Coast tour with a bit of hometown fanfare in the tightly packed Hotel Utah performance space. "Tonight we are celebrating the birth of my CD. Afterwards we'll all have cake - I even made it myself!"
There's a pause. She looks out into the crowded room, filled with friends and family as well as many curious listeners. "Hmm, I hope there's enough to go around!" she says, chuckling.
There's good reason for Pappademas to sound so thrilled. Her new self-released CD, Eleven Songs, is an utterly beguiling collection of introspective piano-driven pop blessed with a warm-bath production and thoughtfully arranged bare-bones instrumentation.
Bearing the narrative agility of a class-act storyteller as well as the unhurried precision of a poet, Pappademas writes lyrics that carry impressive weight standing alone on the page. Delivered in her smoldering alto, evoking a cross between Jolie Holland and Fiona Apple, they burn with an almost disarming poignancy. Which is why I'm here. Sure, I like cake and all, but I came for her songs.
She begins with an absorbing, gradually unfolding depiction of madness on "The Born Again April Fool" ("The walls bled at the hospitals / He buried the furniture out in the garden"). Over gently urgent piano thrusts and understated thumping from drummer Rob Sanchez, the story evolves into an unsettling but sympathetic portrait of Scott Panetti, a schizophrenic currently on death row in Texas despite a massive public outcry over the inhumanity of executing a man with severe mental illness. The song lingers in the room well after the piano sighs its final note.
Also joining Pappademas onstage is violinist-accordionist Chris Black, whose swaying accompaniment brings added tenderness to the music. His playfulness on the Aimee MannÐesque "I Had to Tell You" helps the song bob along with doses of accordion whimsy, while the artist's lament "Desaturate It" benefits from a similar instant romanticism thanks to the instrument. A tale about a film facing cuts in order to keep its Motion Picture Association of America rating, the song is more universally about the dilemma of artists having to water down their work in order to please others: "And I was gonna be Rauschenberg / I was gonna be Pollock / But the MPAA had to save the eyes of the public." Pappademas takes her craft seriously, as these words suggest.
The evening's highlight arrives in the form of "Keep Going West," a subtly devastating chronicle of leaving town for a fresh start after the tumultuous end of a relationship. Alone on piano, her voice delicately trembling on the edges of certain notes, Pappademas reveals, "The tires are curled on the side of the road / Sleeping off the breakup from the wheel and the load / I am curled on one side of the bed / In a Motel 6, with my independence." It's powerful stuff, to be sure, but worth every lip-biting second. (Todd Lavoie)
LIZ PAPPADEMAS With Klum and El Olio Wolof. April 22, 9 p.m., $8. Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. (415) 647-2888
11 Songs is available at www.cdbaby.com, Amoeba Music, and Aquarius Records"
- Todd Lavoie, San Francisco Bay Guardian, April 11, 2007
Liz Pappademas
Sublime shadows, tawny-port richness
BY TODD LAVOIE
Wednesday January 24, 2007
PREVIEW I'm thinking this might be my own silent, stubborn protest against our gadget-driven, hyperstimulated culture, but lately I've found myself drawn toward minimalism. While the rest of the world text-messages one another about the latest technological triumph detailed in Wired magazine, all I want to do is lie on a barren floor and write haiku about Frank Stella's canvases while Brian Eno plinks the same three notes over and over again into infinity. Less is more, so they say, and I'm taking it to heart. So is local singer-songwriter Liz Pappademas, judging from her recent recordings. The former frontperson for Austin trio Hurts to Purr, Pappademas has returned to her native San Francisco with a new focus on folky minimalism as she begins work on her first solo album. Her penetratingly personal, slow-burning lyrics Ñ think Joni Mitchell meets Raymond Carver at the piano bar Ñ benefit from bare-bones arrangements that cast sublime shadows behind the tawny-port richness of her voice.
Lend your ears to the "Keep Going West" demo on her MySpace page, and you too will be infatuated by the deceptively simple construction of Pappademas's confessions.
- Todd Lavoie, San Francisco Bay Guardian, January 12, 2007
BREAKUP WATCH: Hurts to Purr
After three years and the recent release of its eponymously titled full-length debut (self-released; available through cdbaby.com), this Austin band is calling it quits. It's a shame, as these relative newcomers have made an album so confident and assuredly cool that it seems to have sprung from seasoned vets. Vocalist and pianist Liz Pappademas' songs gleam with uncanny originality ("Mr. Atom," the wisely cynical "Six Months," the hypnotic "Stop Blowing Your House Down"). Her voice has a charming, dusky timbre, while her playing channels everyone from Randy Newman to Paul Bley. If you've haven't caught them, do so quickly. According to their Web site, Pappademas is soon San FranciscoÐbound. Wherever she ends up, she's a talent you'll want to keep in your sights."
- Jeff McCord, Texas Monthly, April 2005